Remember all the controversy a few months back about building a fence along the US border with Mexico to keep out illegal immigrants? Some $2.4 billion has been spent since 2005 on a still-unfinished project to erect more than 600 miles of new fence along the US-Mexico border – a finding that is being met with surprise, anger, and consternation by immigrant groups and at least some border residents. The entire length of the Mexico-United States border is 1952 miles long. [Border Fence Project]
Last September the [Christian Science Monitor] reported that “$6.5 billion will be needed to maintain the new fencing over the next 20 years. So far, it has been breached 3,363 times, requiring $1,300 for the average repair.”
The Anderson Cooper video demonstrates that the border fence does not or will not work. The cost of building and maintaining the fence is exorbitant. Those billions of dollars can be put to better use. Health care reform certainly comes to mind. If you add in the billions of dollars spent, and still being spent in the war on Iraq, was a waste of money and lives. The cost of the war in Afghanistan is questionable as well. The United States has, during my lifetime alone, spent trillions of dollars in war. My lifetime experience includes World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan. The United States, as a nation, seems enamored with war. Only in World War II were we attacked by another country—Japan. We were not attacked by the countries of Korea, Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan.
That tunnel under the border fence with Anderson Cooper was located at Otay Mesa which is at Tijuana. The tunnel would have permitted a flow of illegal immigrants and narcotics into the United States from Mexico.
Last spring President Barack Obama’s budget blueprint canceled plans to extend the border fence along the U.S.-Mexico border beyond the 670 miles already completed or planned, symbolically breaking with a much-heralded approach to border security advocated by President George W. Bush. [Dallas Morning News] That should end the waste of money for the ineffective border fence project.
The US-Mexico border will re-emerge again as soon as Congress can get back to it from their arguing over health care reform. The question about security of the border will center around illegal immigration and Mexican drug cartel’s entry into the United States. [Politico]
It may well be that the security of the United States is in more danger from the drug cartels than either illegal immigration, terrorists or Al Qaida in Afghanistan/Pakistan. You might want to add citizens of the United States who are addicted to drugs and buy them from the drug cartels as threats to national security.
CNN’s Michael Ware also has a video that takes you “to perhaps the deadliest city on earth (Juarez); 2,400 murders this year alone right across the border from El Paso, Texas and the violence is spilling over into America.”
In Juarez, 1,600 people died from drug-related violence last year. This year, the total’s already well over 2,000. And today’s total is already at 12, reports Ware. Mexico is in a mess.
“The (Mexican) people fear not just the cartels, but they watch the army and the police stand by as others are being killed. They know that many of the police are corrupt, that the military’s doing nothing,” said Ware. [CNN]
The Mexican drug cartels are establishing connections into the US Military. [KHOU-Houston]
“Authorities in California gathered intelligence showing the cartels are corrupting American politicians to gain a foothold in the Southwestern United States.” [Las Cruces Sun-News]
Cartels send representatives to U.S. communities to buy legitimate businesses, such as strip malls, restaurants, auto dealerships and used tire shops. Then, they invite local politicians and police to receive free meals and discounts, until they can develop relationships with influential people.
“They could give an entire city council a million dollars, and fire police chiefs, city managers, city attorneys, and anyone else who opposes them,” [Richard Valdemar, 33 year veteran Los Angeles Sheriff's Department] said. “They got local laws changed so they could run nightclubs, liquor stores and other businesses without interference. They went after cities’ towing contracts and other types of contracts.”
Although the true source of the money is hidden, he said the cartels contribute cash to the election campaigns of politicians, and finance negative campaigns against their rivals.
The Carrillo Fuentes organization in El Paso had its own bank in El Paso, parked its jets at city airport hangars and owned commercial properties across the county, drug investigators said.
I expect we’ll hear more and more about Mexican drug cartel activity in the United States, perhaps even here in Nye County, Nevada.
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